This again to Calphurnia.

  No matter.—­Virtue triumphs by neglect: 
  Vice, while it darkens, lends but foil to brightness: 
  And juster times, removing slander’s veil,
  Wrong’d merit after death is help’d to live.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] This was sent us by an unknown hand.

[2] This play he made a present of to the patentee, and had several fine
    scenes painted for it, at his own expence:  He indeed gave all his
    pieces to the stage; never taking any benefit, or gratuity from the
    managers, as an author—­’till his last piece, Merope, was brought on
    the stage; when (unhappy gentleman) he was under the necessity of
    receiving his profits of the third nights; which ’till then, his
    generosity, and spirit, had ever declined.

[3] Under the name of Georgia.

[4] Savage was of great use to Mr. Pope, in helping him to little
    stories, and idle tales, of many persons whose names, lives, and
    writings, had been long since forgot, had not Mr. Pope mentioned
    them in his Dunciad:—­This office was too mean for any one but
    inconsistent Savage:  Who, with a great deal of absurd pride, could
    submit to servile offices; and for the vanity of being thought Mr.
    Pope’s intimate, made no scruple of frequently sacrificing a regard
    to sincerity or truth.  He had certainly, at one time, considerable
    influence over that great poet; but an assuming arrogance at last
    tired out Mr. Pope’s patience.

[5] A lame come-off.

* * * * *

Mr. LEWIS THEOBALD.

This gentleman was born at Sittingburn in Kent, of which place his father, Mr. Peter Theobald, was an eminent attorney.  His grammatical learning he received chiefly under the revd.  Mr. Ellis, at Isleworth in Middlesex, and afterwards applied himself to the study and practice of the law:  but finding that study too tedious and irksome for his genius, he quitted it for the profession of poetry.  He engaged in a paper called the Censor, published in Mill’s Weekly Journal; and by delivering his opinion with two little reserve, concerning some eminent wits, he exposed himself to their lashes, and resentment.  Upon the publication of Pope’s Homer, he praised it in the most extravagant terms of admiration; but afterwards thought proper to retract his opinion, for reasons we cannot guess, and abused the very performance he had before hyperbollically praised.

Mr. Pope at first made Mr. Theobald the hero of his Dunciad, but afterwards, for reasons best known to himself, he thought proper to disrobe him of that dignity, and bestow it upon another:  with what propriety we shall not take upon us to determine, but refer the reader to Mr. Cibber’s two letters to Mr. Pope.  He was made hero of the poem, the annotator informs us, because no better was to be had.  In the first book of the Dunciad, Mr. Theobald, or Tibbald, as he is there called, is thus stigmatised,